The Ninth Vibration | Page 9

for you, not me.
"What do I perceive tonight?"
"The Present as it is in the Eternal. Say no more. Come with me."
She stretched her hand and took mine with the assurance of a goddess,
and we went up the hall where the night had been deepest between the
great pillars.
Now it is very clear to me that in every land men, when the doors of
perception are opened, will see what we call the Supernatural clothed in
the image in which that country has accepted it. Blake, the mighty

mystic, will see the Angels of the Revelation, driving their terrible way
above Lambeth - it is not common nor unclean. The fisherman, plying
his coracle on the Thames will behold the consecration of the great new
Abbey of Westminster celebrated with mass and chant and awful lights
in the dead mid-noon of night by that Apostle who is the Rock of the
Church. Before him who wanders in Thessaly Pan will brush the dewy
lawns and slim-girt Artemis pursue the flying hart. In the pale gold of
Egyptian sands the heavy brows of Osiris crowned with the pshent will
brood above the seer and the veil of Isis tremble to the lifting. For all
this is the rhythm to which the souls of men are attuned and in that
vibration they will see, and no other, since in this the very mountains
and trees of the land are rooted. So here, where our remote ancestors
worshipped the Gods of Nature, we must needs stand before the Mystic
Mother of India, the divine daughter of the Himalaya.
How shall I describe the world we entered? The carvings upon the
walls had taken life - they had descended. It was a gathering of the
dreams men have dreamed here of the Gods, yet most real and actual.
They watched in a serenity that set them apart in an atmosphere of their
own - forms of indistinct majesty and august beauty, absolute, simple,
and everlasting. I saw them as one sees reflections in rippled water - no
more. But all faces turned to the place where now a green and
flowering leafage enshrined and partly hid the living Nature Goddess,
as she listened to a voice that was not dumb to me. I saw her face only
in glimpses of an indescribable sweetness, but an influence came from
her presence like the scent of rainy pine forests, the coolness that
breathes from great rivers, the passion of Spring when she breaks on
the world with a wave of flowers. Healing and life flowed from it.
Understanding also. It seemed I could interpret the very silence of the
trees outside into the expression of their inner life, the running of the
green life-blood in their veins, the delicate trembling of their
finger-tips.
My companion and I were not heeded. We stood hand in hand like
children who have innocently strayed into a palace, gazing in
wonderment. The august life went its way upon its own occasions, and,
if we would, we might watch. Then the voice, clear and cold,

proceeding, as it were, with some story begun before we had strayed
into the Presence, the whole assembly listening in silence.
"- and as it has been so it will be, for the Law will have the blind soul
carried into a body which is a record of the sins it has committed, and
will not suffer that soul to escape from rebirth into bodies until it has
seen the truth -"
And even as this was said and I listened, knowing myself on the verge
of some great knowledge, I felt sleep beginning to weigh upon my
eyelids. The sound blurred, flowed unsyllabled as a stream, the girl's
hand grew light in mine; she was fading, becoming unreal; I saw her
eyes like faint stars in a mist. They were gone. Arms seemed to receive
me - to lay me to sleep and I sank below consciousness, and the night
took me.
When I awoke the radiant arrows of the morning were shooting into the
long hall where I lay, but as I rose and looked about me, strange - most
strange, ruin encircled me everywhere. The blue sky was the roof.
What I had thought a palace lost in the jungle, fit to receive its King
should he enter, was now a broken hall of State; the shattered pillars
were festooned with waving weeds, the many coloured lantana grew
between the fallen blocks of marble. Even the sculptures on the walls
were difficult to decipher. Faintly I could trace a hand, a foot, the orb of
a woman's bosom, the gracious outline of some young God, standing
above a crouching worshipper. No more. Yes, and now I saw above me
as the